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The 12 most outrageously creative swears on television

WARNING: The following feature contains some appallingly vulgar language.

Last week you gave you a brief history of swearing on film on TV. This week, we’re counting down some of the most creative uses of uh.. ‘colourful’ language ever to have graced our screens. These characters definitely need to wash their mouths out with soap. Listen with headphones, and don’t watch with your granny!

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Veep

We knew Veep was going to be crowned the queen of unorthodox political comedy right from the get-go. Here’s Amy describing Dan in the show’s first ever episode, ‘Fundraiser’: “It’s like if there were a book with covers made of shit, then you’d think, that’s intriguing, I wonder what’s in this book that people saw fit to give it covers made from pure shit. But then you open it up and it’s just… shit”. Harsh. Also worthy of an honourable mention is Selina’s analogy of the croissant dildo.

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The Thick of It

Veep creator Armando Ianucci first cut his teeth as a virtuoso of vulgarity in The Thick of It. Here’s Peter Capaldi as the foul mouthed Malcolm Tucker, firing off a shocking, swear-filled tirade: “If some cunt can fuck something up, that cunt will pick the worst possible time to fucking fuck it up cause that cunt’s a cunt”. My ears are bleeding!

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Silicon Valley

The Pied Piper gang went from ‘negging’ to begging in this ingenious montage, where Erlich suggests a strategy of insulting potential investors to negotiate better deals. “You called me a shit-riddled anal wasteland”, and “You called me a chode-gargling fuck toilet” are particular highlights from the insulted investors.

Click for video!

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South Park

One of TV’s most notorious curse-a-thons, this episode titled ‘It Hits The Fan’ saw the crude cartoon use the word “shit” more than 150 times, in both spoken and written form. Even the show’s most butter-wouldn’t-melt characters (namely Butters) were in on the lewd laughs for this self-aware celebration of swearing.

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Curb Your Enthusiasm

Never one to be polite, Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s third season finale ‘The Grand Opening’ was notably profane, as every single character in attendance of Larry’s restaurant opening launched into an opera of improvised cursing, with Susie’s use of the term “carwash cunt” gaining particular popularity among viewers.

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Seinfeld

Where Larry David’s other baby Seinfeld tended to keep things relatively PG for the kids watching at home, Jerry and the gang were allowed to indulge in enough cursing for all nine seasons put together in ‘The Non-Fat Yogurt’ – an episode that actually centred around the F word.

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Dexter

Obviously, no piece on colourful TV cursing would be complete without the inclusion of Dexter’s potty mouthed little sister, Debra Morgan. While it’s difficult to go with just one of her appalling ‘turns of phrase’, “shit a brick and fuck me with it” is pretty high up on our list.

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Entourage

Another champion of the R-rated rant is Entourage‘s Ari Gold. Poor Lloyd had no idea what Ari had in store for him when he happily bounded into his office in Episode 8 of Season 5: “Has so much cum squirt in those eyes you can’t see what’s right in front of your face? Amanda Daniels takes that job, Vince is fucked and I’m fucked. Which means we’re all fucked. And we’re fucked in the way you like to get fucked, not fucked in the way normal people like to get fucked”. Ouch!

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Breaking Bad

More of a recurring catchphrase than a specific line, Jesse Pinkman has become synonymous with his use of the word ‘bitch’. And while that’s not technically considered a swear word anymore in our laid back modern society, we couldn’t not include it in our pile of pure profanity. Our favourite? “Speak into the mic, bitch”!

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Deadwood

Speaking of catchphrases, what the hell is Deadwood‘s obsession with the word “cocksuckers”? This ingenious eight minute montage has us both crying with laughter and feeling kind of sick to our stomachs. Prize for most creative use in a sentence? That probably has to go to Calamity Jane for “millinery- sample-suitcase cocksucker”. Simply brilliant.

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The Wire

We’re confident we’ve saved the very best til last. No, this isn’t a parody. In the episode entitled ‘Old Cases’, Bunk and McNulty literally filled four and a half legendary minutes using only the words ‘fuck’, ‘motherfucker’, and a series of grunting noises. We wonder what the script looked like for this scene…